Thunder Bay – Ashley McKay was a young woman with hope. She had graduated from Dennis Franklin Cromarty, and was looking forward to a career in aviation.
Sadly her life turn a dark turn, and she got trapped in some bad places. Her life was taken in a brutal murder. It happened in the 200 block of Cumming Street and her body was found by Thunder Bay police on Oct. 30, 2018.
Ashley, who was often around downtown Fort William in either her Chicago Bulls baseball cap back when the NetNewsLedger offices were on Victoria Avenue, she told me that she wanted to be a pilot.
Ashely was a mostly upbeat young woman, and no matter what life threw in her path she took it and just kept going.
However, sadly like many young Indigenous women in Thunder Bay, addiction grabbed hold of Ashley. She lived a life that saw many of her friends die. But she remained positive in many ways over the years.
Ashley’s dream of being a pilot didn’t happen. Ashley McKay was murdered.
This beautiful young woman, who had so much potential had talked about getting back to moving forward in her life, but faced a lot of obstacles. Housing was an issue, and she had been banned at Shelter House.
She ended up like many in the city, couch surfing.
While it might be easy to write off the people who are not as fortunate as many of us in our city, the truth is the problems of addiction are not relegated to the poor.
When one looks at the situation today in our city with homelessness, the spiralling numbers of deaths from drug overdoses, what is often missed is that the lost people who die, or have their lives changed forever is the real cost.
Thinking about Ashley Mckay, who has been in the spirit world now for over six years, one wonders, has anything really changed?
James Murray